


Underrepresented in the Genre

by trascendenza



Category: Psych
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Geeks, M/M, POV Character of Color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-08
Updated: 2009-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/pseuds/trascendenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gus' relationship with comic books from 1986 to 2008. <em>"Wait until you see the colors on this one," María said, sliding the issue over the counter.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Underrepresented in the Genre

_1986._

*

Six years old, he wandered to the corner of the store while Shawn was busy harassing the owner, trying to get her to sell the giant cardboard cutout of Superman for a quarter (which Shawn didn't have, of course, but Gus had his emergency quarter in his sock and it was a pretty cool cutout so he was willing to give it up if by some miraculous chance Shawn suceeded). He looked at the displays with large, curious eyes, soaking in all the bright colors and large text, but he was too scared to touch anything.

"Hey there," a woman said as she stocked the shelves. "Can I help you find something?"

Gus shook his head slowly. "I've never seen books like these before."

She handed him one from the box. "Here, try this on for the size."

_Uncanny X-Men #168_, he read, and blinked at the image of the woman in yellow and black who looked like she'd just had the worst day imaginable. "Wow," he said. He wanted to know her story.

The woman smiled, tucking her long black strands of hair behind her ear. She was looking at him the same way his parents did when he came home with all "E"s on his report card. "I have a feeling you'll like it."

Gus opened and began to read.

When he looked up hours later, there was a neat stack of the issues he'd devoured next to his knee and it was dark outside. He'd forgotten, for awhile, that there was a world outside of the one he was holding in his hands.

*

"I'm gonna shoot lasers out of my eyes," Shawn said, raising his hands to his eyes and pointing out his index fingers like little antennae. They were sitting in Shawn's living room, Gus in a blue cape and Shawn in a red one. "What about you?"

Gus thought about it.

"Oh! Or I'll grow as big as Godzilla. I'll eat Mrs. Pandensky first. Who would you eat?"

Gus frowned. "No one!"

Shawn rolled his eyes. "You'll be an awfully hungry dinosaur, then. I bet you'd shrink after a week if you didn't eat anyone, it's in the rulebook. C'mon, Gus, what cool stuff are you gonna do?"

Gus brought his hand up, tapping his index finger on his chin, and thought about it.

"Oh, man, do you think Superman can fly into the _sun_?"

Gus nodded. "It's canon."

"I'll have the best tan ever," Shawn said, zooming the tiny dinosaur figure through the air, making "bzzzzz" noises while he circled it around Gus' head.

Ten minutes later, after serious thinking, Gus said, "I'd just want to help people," but by then Shawn had gone into the kitchen to create adocpeatooine sandwich, which apparently was a some kind of combination of Dr. Pepper, peanut butter, cheetohs, and red vines. Gus cringed when he heard the blender start.

*

Gus tied the cape more tightly around his neck, lifting his chin and crossing his arms and puffing his chest out until he was a perfect emulation of the cover of the issue he'd laid down on the chair next to the mirror.

After awhile his chest got sore and his neck cramped.

"Hmm," he said, dropping his arms. He wasn't sure why they always stood like that. It didn't make him feel much different.

*

"Hey, you," the woman said. Gus stood on his tiptoes, peeking up over the counter. Her nametag read _María_. "Long time no see."

"Hello again." He smiled at her, happy that she remembered him. He dug into his pocket and withdrew the money he'd been saving for the past three months since he'd been here last. He slid it over the countertop. "What will this buy me, please?"

Her eyebrows shot up. "Thirty-five dollars, huh?" She walked around the counter and knelt, giving him a conspiratorial smile. "It'll get you a whole lot, buddy. How about I introduce you to some of my favorites?"

_Yay,_ Gus thought quietly, dancing in his mind. Out loud, he said, "I'd like that very much, thank you," and followed her through the store obediently.

*

_1992._

*

"At least have the decency to read that in the bathroom stalls like the rest of the geeks," Shawn said, flicking the corner of the cover with his finger.

"Hey!" Gus said, jerking the comic away. "This is limited edition, Shawn. Have a little respect."

Shawn sighed. "Wow, dude. Way to completely and entirely miss the point."

"You have no point, Shawn. You were born pointless." Gus shifted in the bus seat, facing toward the window, trying to angle the pages away from the glare of the sun. "Besides, you know that I can't spend more than five minutes maximum in public bathrooms. That's just unhygienic."

"Your face is unhygienic," Shawn grumbled, but Gus just smiled because they both knew that the way they were sitting now, Shawn could read over his shoulder without admitting that he was reading over his shoulder. Gus angled the pages higher and didn't say anything.

*

"Wait until you see the colors on this one," María said, sliding the issue over the counter.

Gus looked at the cover. "_Damn._"

"And it only gets better."

"Thank you so much for putting this on hold. You're the best."

She grinned. "You know that's right."

He went over to his usual seat, pulling out the homework he had to do before he would let himself read, hurrying through the equations at breakneck speed.

*

"Oh my God," Gus breathed when he entered the building, looking around at the vast sea of people. He just stood there, dumbfounded, soaking in the costumes, the stands of vendors and the conversations, which were spoken in a language full of concepts that had been formless ideas into his mind until he heard these words giving shape to them.

He grinned because it suddenly hit him -- this was _his_ turf -- and he stepped forward into the fray, feeling a confidence he hadn't felt since he'd said "o" instead of "i."

*

_1994._

*

"I'll be honest with you, Gus," she said, flipping through the sketchbook.

He braced himself, prepared for the worst. He almost hadn't been able to talk himself into bringing it today -- he'd managed to keep "forgetting" his sketchbook at home for the past two years -- but in the end he'd figured if he were going to get shot down, it might as well be sooner rather than later.

"If you aren't published someday, I will personally punch the universe in the face, because it would be a criminal waste of great talent." She pointed at his latest, a crosshatched portrait. "This is amazing."

"I, wow, I -- thank you, I don't know what to, I mean --"

She held up a hand. "You said you had some plotlines you wanted to run by me?"

"Oh, yeah," Gus said, on slightly steadier ground (because even in his wildest dreams he'd never imagined his guru of all things comic calling something he'd drawn _amazing_, and no, he wasn't going to be getting over it anytime this month, hell, maybe year). "I was thinking that other than Batman, non-powered heroes are kind of underrepresented in the genre and there's definitely a dearth of ones who operate within the boundaries of the law, so I wrote up this color-coded outline..."

*

_2008._

*

"Dude," Shawn said, sneaking a peek over his shoulder. "That's totally me."

"Shawn!" Gus cried, jumping and fumbling with the pad. "What the hell, you don't just sneak up on someone like that. I could have stabbed you with this pen."

"Gus, you couldn't stab a fly, much less your best-friend-slash-sweet-manlover who --" Shawn grabbed the pad, holding it up to the light and out of Gus' grasp, "you clearly spend all your free time drawing!"

"That's the only --"

Shawn flipped through the twenty other pages of his likeness.

"-- um."

Gus tried to bury his face in his hands, but Shawn plopped dramatically into his lap, effectively barring him from wallowing in shame. "It's okay, Gus. I've always known that I'm the Galileo to your Pigfalion."

"Galatea and _Pygmalion_, Shawn, get it right."

"Agree to disagree. Now, where are the nudes? If I know anything about you, Gus, it's that you've got a secret oeuvre dedicated to capturing the magnificence of Little Shawn."

"You know that I would do no such thing." Gus said.

"True, but you _should._"

"I can't believe you know the word oeuvre. Which, by the way, is not pronounced 'oy vay.'"

"Read it in your diary last night. 'María says my oeuvre has a Dodsonesque tone to the linework,' was it? I'm going to have to assume that sentence means something in geek," Shawn said. "But before you start explaining, let me remind you that ignorance is bliss when it comes to the sordid geeky things you do on your own time --"

Gus tried to reach around him to grab the pad back, because Shawn was flipping to the last page and that was the --

"Dude." Shawn turned to him, eyes wide. "Dude."

Gus swallowed, because he hadn't even let María see this one, yet. It was him and Shawn, and he'd spent weeks on it, and the truth was that he hadn't felt this nervous about something since he was fifteen and picked up _The Fundamentals of Lineart_.

Shawn held it up to Gus, waving it. "We look _awesome._"

"Shut up," Gus said, but his lungs were working again.

"We look so awesome that I feel the word awesome needs to be combined with, like, seven other words to convey the true amount of awesomeness. We look _awefaneatuberpalicious_, and that is not a word I use lightly."

"Or ever."

Shawn grinned. "Exactly."

Gus snatched the pad back, but as he slipped his hands up Shawn's shirt to pull him down for a kiss, there was a voice in the back of his mind saying _he might not be the only one who thinks so,_ and he wasn't ignoring it.

*

_Dear Mr. Guster,_

I wanted to thank you once again for everything you did to help my father and my family. We are in your debt and will not soon forget it.

Sincerely,

Harry Chu

Gus carefully framed it on the wall next to the seven other cards.

*

"Time for lunch already?" María called from the back of the store when he came in. Now that she owned it, she usually worked through lunch, but he made sure to stop by at least a few times a week to get her out of here. As much as he loved the place, the fresh air did them both good.

"No, I," he pulled the folder out of his briefcase. "I had something I wanted to show you first."

"It's been months since you've had something new for me," she said, coming out of the storeroom, wiping her hands with a rag. "I wasn't going to say anything, but I was getting worried."

"Well, the truth is, I have been working. I just wanted to wait until..." He handed her his fourth draft, the pages loose-leaf in the black folder. "It was all done."

"You've been holding out on me," she said, opening it. Her eyebrows shot up when she saw the cover Shawn had seen earlier, now rounded out with the text _No Cape Necessary, Volume 1_. "You've _really_ been holding out on me."

"I'm sorry --" He started, but she cut him off with a raised hand as she kept reading.

"The adventures of Burt Gussan and his best friend Shane Spender?" She read, and then laughed, the curls of her hair bouncing as she shook her head. "Oh, Gus, I love it already."

"So, you think --"

"That if you don't submit this I'll kick your ass?" María gave him the look, the same one she used to shame shoplifters into giving up the goods.

Gus' mouth opened and closed a few times. He finally settled on, "Yes, ma'am."

María patted his hand, grinning. "Good boy."

*

Thirty-two years old, he walked up to a mailbox holding a certified mail manila envelope while Shawn was busy harassing the mime on the corner by imitating his every move (for what purpose, Gus wasn't sure, but he had his emergency bail money in his sock in case it ended badly). He looked down at it, realizing there was an entire world he'd created inside, and dropped it in feeling as if he were in an elevator that had suddenly, stomach-lurchingly dropped.

Taking a deep breath when the light-headedness passed, he turned towards the corner to go rescue an innocent mime.


End file.
